Sehour, the Breakfast of Fasting Champions
0 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Tuesday, October 26 at Tuesday, October 26, 2004.
Sehour - now this is a concept the rest of the world needs to adopt. Basically, it is a legitimised midnight snack, but done in style, and at 2am. In Ramadan most people change their time cycles in order to minimise the time spent actually fasting. So people sleep in until 10-11am, go to work, work for maybe 5 hours maximum, leave the office by 3pm, get home and sleep until Iftar (dinner) time at 5:30, have a giant Iftar meal, and then sleep or laze about again for another hour or two. Those who work in competitive private sector jobs often then go back to work at 8-9pm for a couple of hours of evening work, those who work in the government or in any typical Egyptian low-productivity industry job laze about watching the special "made for Ramadan" TV miniseries that are all over the TV channels.
So after a few hours of work/lazing around, by about 1:30-2am, its time for Sehour! Which is like breakfast, but at 2am. Typical sehour would be flat bread, fuul (stewed beans, taste much better than they sound), taamiya (felafel), white soft cheese, and maybe a boiled egg. A more decadent Sehour (for rich people) would have things like Shawerma, Fiteer (like an Egyptian pizza) and lots of delicious sweet pastries (most along the "baklava" theme of thin crispy pastry soaked with honey and sprinkled with nuts).
The coolest thing about Sehour is the ambience - going out at 2am onto crowded but slightly subdued streets, eating in a big cafe thats full of people so late at night....it is a bit quieter than normal Cairo madness (a bit...) and the moon is full in the sky. And you are ordering a meal. At 2am. It feels kind of naughty and wrong, but everyone is doing it, so all is ok.
It is also a really effective method for fasting. If you go to bed with some food in your stomach, you wake up feeling relatively OK, and it delays the hunger pains until 2-3pm, by which time the end is near and you can start licking your lips and dreaming of Iftar. Iftar is by far the most debaucherous moment in the Egyptian culinary calendar - there is even a system to maximise the hedonistic eating potential. Instead of just stuffing your face at exactly 5:30 pm, you take it slow. Start with a dried date, maybe a couple of cashew nuts, and a glass of apricot juice or karkadey (hibiscus flower drink). Slowly, slowly, move on tearing up a piece of flat bread and dunking it in hummous, tehina or maybe baba ghanoug (eggplant dip, pure heaven). You see, if you just dig into a big plate or food right away, you feel stuffed after ten minutes (something about your stomach shrinking during the day the Egyptians tell me). But if you take things slow, and measured, Iftar can be a good solid hour of well paced evenly balanced victory-eating.
So I have been fasting for nearly two weeks now - and to be honest its not really that difficult. Just imagine waking up and going to work with no breakfast (something most people do quite often anyhow), then forgetting to have lunch as well, then going home and having dinner at 5:30. Yeah, you would be really hungry, but it is managable. What is difficult is the water. Not drinking water for a whole day sucks. But hey, if it is Allah's will then who am I to criticise.
So after a few hours of work/lazing around, by about 1:30-2am, its time for Sehour! Which is like breakfast, but at 2am. Typical sehour would be flat bread, fuul (stewed beans, taste much better than they sound), taamiya (felafel), white soft cheese, and maybe a boiled egg. A more decadent Sehour (for rich people) would have things like Shawerma, Fiteer (like an Egyptian pizza) and lots of delicious sweet pastries (most along the "baklava" theme of thin crispy pastry soaked with honey and sprinkled with nuts).
The coolest thing about Sehour is the ambience - going out at 2am onto crowded but slightly subdued streets, eating in a big cafe thats full of people so late at night....it is a bit quieter than normal Cairo madness (a bit...) and the moon is full in the sky. And you are ordering a meal. At 2am. It feels kind of naughty and wrong, but everyone is doing it, so all is ok.
It is also a really effective method for fasting. If you go to bed with some food in your stomach, you wake up feeling relatively OK, and it delays the hunger pains until 2-3pm, by which time the end is near and you can start licking your lips and dreaming of Iftar. Iftar is by far the most debaucherous moment in the Egyptian culinary calendar - there is even a system to maximise the hedonistic eating potential. Instead of just stuffing your face at exactly 5:30 pm, you take it slow. Start with a dried date, maybe a couple of cashew nuts, and a glass of apricot juice or karkadey (hibiscus flower drink). Slowly, slowly, move on tearing up a piece of flat bread and dunking it in hummous, tehina or maybe baba ghanoug (eggplant dip, pure heaven). You see, if you just dig into a big plate or food right away, you feel stuffed after ten minutes (something about your stomach shrinking during the day the Egyptians tell me). But if you take things slow, and measured, Iftar can be a good solid hour of well paced evenly balanced victory-eating.
So I have been fasting for nearly two weeks now - and to be honest its not really that difficult. Just imagine waking up and going to work with no breakfast (something most people do quite often anyhow), then forgetting to have lunch as well, then going home and having dinner at 5:30. Yeah, you would be really hungry, but it is managable. What is difficult is the water. Not drinking water for a whole day sucks. But hey, if it is Allah's will then who am I to criticise.
0 Responses to “Sehour, the Breakfast of Fasting Champions”
Post a Comment